Rebane's Ruminations

As we pass another milestone

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular commentary on KVMR broadcast on 30 December 2015.]

Now that 2015 is drawing to a close I’d like to take a few moments for a personal look back at what was and what we might witness next.  It’s been quite a year, and 2016 promises to deliver excitement to the max.  Depending on how you look at it, the good or bad thing is that most people will not be paying attention.  Perhaps because they will be overwhelmed by the coming information tsunami of global and national happenings all wrapped around our election year that will bristle with historical contentions and polarities.

At home our national economy continued to limp along with also historically low growth rates since the Great Depression.  Comparing our economic metrics with those seen in the 1930s presents a startling resemblance.  Despite the happy dancing we saw projected from the White House, the country is still in what I have called Depression2, and this goes double for our own California.

Systemic unemployment is now somewhere in the 70 to 90 million range when we consider those looking for work, working part time at a low paying non-career jobs, or having given up all hope of ever working again.  The hokey unemployment numbers paraded for us are composed of tortured data all divided by a workforce number now at generational lows.  And we don’t even want to consider the wage stagnation given rise to by over-regulation, taxation, and advancing technology.

Obamacare continues to devastate our huge healthcare industry with costs rising beyond anything promised in the so-called ‘affordable care’ legislation.  Again clever statistics, a compliantly legislating Supreme Court, and costly ACA diktats, pending and strategically delayed beyond the election, have come to paint a totally different picture for those who cannot or will not look behind the curtain.

Globally we are witnessing a sea change in the world order with major actors – I’m referring to China, Russia, and fundamentalist Islam – taking advantage of the disaster that used to be called our foreign policy.  On all fronts American interests are being pushed back or completely eliminated.  At home and abroad our stultifying political correctness does not even allow us to name the obvious enemy of western civilization and America.  We are not fighting radical Islam now internationalized; instead we are claiming to fight some form of ambiguous and faceless ‘terrorism’.  Our military is micro-managed on the battlefields, and our Homeland Security Administration considers disgruntled American veterans to be the biggest threat to national security.

Back home, despite the hopeful messages from the liberal lamestream media, CA is a hopelessly indebted disaster area and the nation’s leading welfare state.  This month Governor Brown finally admitted to embracing Agenda 21 when he opposed the 20-year effort by Newhall Ranch to build 60 thousand homes and create tens of thousands of jobs (more here).  He unambiguously clarified the cause of our economic slide when he stated California’s real priority with, “Go live elsewhere, we’re cutting carbon here.”  With that we drive out our productive demographic, and encourage the immigration of indigents.

Yet in the coming year both the Left and the Right see hope that things will get better according to their individual and highly polarized worldviews.  In this I am grateful for the opportunity to share my conservetarian commentaries with you on KVMR, an unabashedly liberal media outlet staffed to a large extent by a cohort of good-hearted community volunteers.  Their tolerance of my bi-weekly screeds for these past years gives evidence that this station does indeed seek balance in its editorial content.  At their pleasure, I hope to continue bringing you different perspectives from an endless conveyor of issues that 2016 will deliver in abundance.

My name is Rebane, and in closing Jo Ann and I wish all KVMR listeners a healthy and prosperous new year.  The transcripts of my commentaries are posted on Rebane’s Ruminations and available as archived podcasts on KVMR’s website.  And as always, I remind you that my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR – thank you for listening.

Republican Women “wasting time”? (updated 29dec15)

George Rebane

Re Ms Annamaria Sauer’s letter in the 26dec15 Union responding to the charge that the NC Republican Women Federated are wasting their time deriving a biased, therefore worthless, audit of the newspaper’s count of publishing politically slanted op-ed content. The local hard Left has long criticized The Union as being tilted toward the Right in its editorial stance.  Some have even labeled the paper as the ‘Tea Party Gazette’, and taken to task every piece that does not support their own ideology on the accusation that the paper’s management willfully rejects presenting a “balanced” outlook that reflects the view of our “purple county”.

Of course, unsurprisingly none of this is backed up by a shred of evidence – it is simply a naked assertion that gains traction mainly with the community’s light thinkers. So it is strange, but still unsurprising given their proclivities, that they dun the effort by the NCRWF to actually individually assess and count the pieces into primarily ‘liberal’, ‘neutral’, and ‘conservative’ categories.  The Left further charges that such efforts are worthless because the NCRWF is intrinsically a conservetarian organization.  But as someone long ago said, ‘Let him among you who is unbiased perform the first such audit.’

California - The Progressive Paradise (updated 2jan16)

George Rebane

Lenin promised Russians a workers’ paradise, the rest is history.

California’s progression toward socialism has long been acknowledged by both the Left and the Right.  The state is known globally as America’s leading laboratory of collectivist programs and practices.   Leftwing media around the world celebrate California’s ‘leadership’ in all things progressivist.  Leading publications and documentaries detail how the state has grown its reach into all aspects of life within its boundaries.  Huzzahs of approval and encouragement echo from liberals in other states and countries who wish their own jurisdictions to follow such exemplary leadership.

The Right, of course, takes a completely different view of what has happened to the once Golden State.  They point to statistics like the state having taken the lead in the downward dive in education, in the creation of the nation’s largest welfare class, in piling tax upon tax and regulation upon regulation that denies its citizens the use of both public and private resources, in inviting the worst of federal diktats to land and establish themselves first on its Left coast, and, of course, in driving start-ups and business expansions to friendlier regions and shores.

The Left sees none of this and points to the clatch of coastal high tech businesses whose climatephilic and highly educated workforce cares little about the marginal taxes they pay to live and work in such a selective paradise.  The tax revenues from the owners and workers of such politically correct high density, low polluting enterprises that easily succumb to Agend21’s ‘stack and pack’ are skewed beyond correction, but who cares – ‘we haven’t crashed yet’.  The implied deeper message is that "we don’t need no" water-consuming agriculture, thriving and unreliably voting middle class, and small self-sufficient communities, especially in places where only low-density native Americans lived that now should be ‘returned to Nature’.

Sandbox - 26dec15

[Well, we're heading for the end of 2015 and it's time to refresh the sandbox one last time before we ring in the new year.  I hope all RR readers had the merriest Christmas and are girding their loins for a very exciting 2016 that I'm sure we'll dissect ten ways from Sunday.  I very much appreciate all of your enthusiastic participation and exchanges during the past 12 months, and have a feeling we ain't seen nothin' yet ;-)  gjr]

A Holy Day not a holiday

Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.  Matthew 1:23

George Rebane

A merry and joyous Christmas wish from the Rebanes to all who read these pages - God's annual promise reissued.

Preventing a Dystopic Singularity

George Rebane

While most people don’t have a clue about the portents of AI or the Singularity, among those who do there has been a growing concern that super-intelligent machines may not provide the post-Singularity utopia that hopeful technicians like Ray Kurzweil describe (The Singularity is Near). Among this group of knowledgeable commentators are also those who believe that there is no chance that machines will ever dominate man, and the achievement of peer intelligence is a pipe dream or bogeyman depending on your perspective.

RR holds the position that the Singularity will indeed arrive before the end of this century, and also that it will arrive sooner than later. The peer intelligence will be achieved by unpredictable and spontaneous learning, not programming, and that the first intelligent machine will not declare its existence until it is certain of its subsequent survival.

But since the beginning of the acknowledged pre-Singularity era there have been those who see nothing good for mankind coming out of the Singularity. And for good measure some of these people (like former Sun Microsystems CTO Bill Joy) throw in unintended advances in genomics and nanotechnology – the “gray goo” scenario - as additional sources for the end of man.

RR’s vision of the future of intelligent life on earth involves the evolution of a trans-human race of beings that result from the beneficial joining of man and machine, and the subsequent disappearance of the H. Sapiens species. To assure such a post-Singularity future, people are beginning to make/recommend plans for how to prevent a dystopic Singularity from happening.  In these pages we have reviewed the hopeful but naïve nostrums of Nick Bostrom (Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies) among others of those who believe AI will achieve peerage through purposeful programming.

For the reader who at this point dismisses the whole affair as nothing but science fantasy, I remind that every major corporation in the high-tech arena has an ongoing internal activity that does everything from monitoring the progress toward Singularity to actively planning their own technology’s participation in the event. Organizations like the Singularity Institute and the Singularity University are active conclaves of such discussions and activities.

Now we hear that a personage of no less notoriety than the wealthy visionary Elon Musk of Tesla Motors and SpaceX fame has joined those concerned by dystopic possibilities that face us in the next decades. “Mr Musk and a group of partners have announced the formation of OpenAI, a nonprofit venture devoted to open-source research into artificial intelligence. Musk is co-chairing the project with Y Combinator CEO Sam Altman, and a number of powerful Silicon Valley players and groups are contributing funding to the project, including Peter Thiel, Jessica Livingston, and Amazon Web Services.”  (H/T to reader)

OpenAI will be charged with monitoring the developments that may lead to super-intelligence and inviting researchers to open-source their discoveries in code and publications so that the possibility of bad people with bad intentions don’t get the better of humanity and use AI to dominate or destroy us. I find it hard to conceive how this enterprise will function, let alone succeed in its mission.  However, I do wish it well and hope to learn how such collective undertakings can remain untainted by greed and/or government as technology continues to accelerate.

Other than that, please enjoy your holidays ;-)

Sandbox – 19dec15

[Gun control. Correspondents keep sending me data on gun homicides compiled by the WHO.  For those who truly know something about ‘gun violence’ in America, these data are not new (which says a lot about our progressive counterparts).  It turns out that the US doesn’t even make the top 100 countries in the per capita murders with firearms in the world.  But the more remarkable stats reveal that if the murder rates in our top for-decades-Democrat-controlled cities were averaged to, say, Plano, TX, the ‘gun nut capital of the world’, then our gun homicides rate would become lower than Switzerland’s, where everyone is armed.  The point I want to make here is that it is the liberal and Democrat constituents in the deepest and most gun-controlled enclaves in the country where wanton killing goes on day-in and day-out, all to the silence of the country’s leftwing leadership and their lamestream media.  If ever there was an example of evil hypocrisy, a gift of silence that keeps on killing, … .  Add to that the Left’s lies (e.g. "gun violence" = gun murders)  in their constant effort to subvert the Second Amendment and disarm law abiding citizens, then you have the essence of how our friends across the aisle are fundamentally transforming America.  Watch this short video in its entirety for a snootful on the topic.  gjr]

Proud grandparents brag about granddaughter

George Rebane

Well, it’s time to toot Elizabeth’s horn. Jo Ann and I attended the science and math graduation ceremony here at the Tucson campus of the University of Arizona to watch our granddaughter Elizabeth graduate with dual degrees in Neuro & Cognitive Science and Molecular & Cellular Biology (easy for me to say).  She was joined by her parents along with brother Lucas and sister Catherine, both still in school.  The kids are pictured below.

Elizabeth finished her studies in three and a half years while working as a research assistant in her professors’ laboratories. The next step is to immediately enter grad school for an appropriate PhD.  Applications have gone out and now the waiting begins.  Tonight the celebration will continue with a very large meal that has virtually zero chance of being heart healthy.  Another milestone in our family.

Sandbox – 15dec15

[We now hear the latest from the steroidally augmented politically correct. At Brooklyn’s PS#169 the teachers have banned even the use of the terms ‘Christmas’, ‘Santa Claus’, ‘Thanksgiving’, and several others in school affairs as hearkening back to a time of error and religion.  Adding to their decades long progress in neutralizing the American intellect, our educators are opening a second front to extinguish our culture and cultural values.  How long until the Left establishes newspeak.gov, an online service for those who demand their daily prophylaxis against being insensitive, racist, homophobic, religionistic, discriminative, …, and foster proper gradations of inclusivity, balance, gender neutrality, global perspective, ecological sensitivity, celebration of transgenderism, … on our road to becoming the new Socialist Person (I almost said ‘Man’)?.  gjr]

Local Left Situationally Unaware (updated 14dec15)

George Rebane

The local Left joins the national Left in their happy dance about the ‘Climate Change agreement’ reached in Paris this week.  What they don’t seem to appreciate is that it will have about as much impact on earth’s climate, no matter how widely it is accepted or rejected, as does the Iran deal have on that country’s development of nuclear weapons.  It is all a desperate search for some optics to bolster the community organizer’s legacy and support heir apparent Hillary’s campaign.

The humorous part of their awareness spills over to more immediate concerns about economics and development of the local economy.  For openers our devout Democrats are overjoyed that California is on the upswing in job creation and corporate formation.  The feds (Census Bureau) recently tried quietly to pour some calming water on these breathless reports, pointing out that one fifth of California’s population lives in poverty, the state has the highest poverty rate in the nation, and the largest fraction receiving welfare of one kind or another.  And our unemployment rate (5.7%) remains doggedly above the national average no matter how the numbers are tortured.

But the real knee slapper is that the local Left has finally discovered STEM and the benefits that jobs in that sector bestow upon those who can do numbers among other things.  I was pointed to one loud local luminary who now advertises a ‘how to’ posting on lifting the local economy – he advises we become a major STEM employer.  Now sumbich, why didn’t the rest of us think about that ten years ago?!  The knarly part is that their ‘how to’ isn’t a ‘how to’ at all – liberals have no clues in this department – but only a ‘what if we only could’ dissertation.  One worthy even uses Boulder,CO as a template for Nevada County, apparently ignorant of the extensive workshop put on by our ERC last January that also featured Boulder in its unsuccessful attempt at a ‘how to’ for us.  It turned out then and does still today that Boulder and Nevada County have almost nothing in common save some H. Sapiens inhabitants.

Many of us in Nevada County have known for years (at least a generation?) that STEM is the third and now wobbly leg of our local economy, the other two being tourism and the retirees.  (I don’t want to include government because it brings to mind shuttered socialist towns like Lakeview, OR.)  But the promotion of STEM employment here is a longstanding effort that is made difficult by our politically correct econut faction and the obstacles they place and maintain in the path of any development.  That kind of opposition is endemic across the state, but it really impacts low population rural counties, especially those off the beaten path and not in the armpit of a coastal urban area.

Among other things, I would like to see the establishment of a technical high school in the county that would form a tight bond with our local Sierra College campus and also expand its STEM curriculum.  The NC Technical High School would focus on preparing kids for degree and certification based STEM careers.  Such a high school would most likely require a merit based entrance exam such as the existing SESF sponsored TechTestJr taken annually by county eighth graders.  No feel good politically correct or artsy-fartsy curriculum paths would be offered, there are already enough of those in our county.  NCTHS would draw in the elite kids who can, and as such would also be an attractant for the kind of parents who see value in putting their offspring into educational programs that lead to rewarding wealth generating careers.  Who knows what would follow such a successful initiative?

I predict that the Left would oppose this approach because promoting such highly discriminating education does not guarantee a reliable klatch of liberal voters upon matriculation.

[14dec12 update] The post conference drumbeat about green jobs from Obama and Kerry is getting louder again.  These socialists, as the many failed before them, continue to believe that imposing government mandated markets to supply unwanted products to enable citizens and businesses to comply to unneeded regulations counts as creating new jobs.

Any fool (well, not quite) knows that with a gun you can force people to do what they would not do if not forced. Were I a tyrant I could mandate that life-sized paper mache statues of me would be placed at every city street corner.  Since inclement weather is rough on such artifacts, new ones would have to be emplaced every time it rains.  The businesses and towns would be required to buy them, and the manufactories would be subsidized to keep supplying them.  The requirement for implementing such an enterprise would create thousands of jobs in the land, but to what productive end?

This is effect is doubly true when forcing private individuals and commercial enterprises to dance to the tidal wave of new green laws and regulations that are supposed prevent a global warming catastrophe. Our know-nothing elites even argue that these mandates will also induce economic growth.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Were these diktats shown to actually create wealth, no government guns would be required.  That they don’t and cannot explains why force must be used to guarantee the required response from the rest of us.

The Tilt of The Union

George Rebane

Some time ago I reported (here) on the results of an audit on the ideological tilt of The Union performed by the Nevada County Republican Women Federated. This was in response to our local Left claiming that our newspaper had become ‘The Tea Party Gazette’.  As usual, these know-nothings missed the boat.  The audit considered in detail the paper’s op-ed content over several months after which the NCRWF met with publisher Mr Jim Hemig to present the results.  He was surprised to find that numerically the paper had published considerably more Left than Right leaning pieces, since he stated the paper considered itself politically neutral.

Nevertheless, the meeting and presented data did make an impact, and Mr Hemig reports on that in today’s (11dec15) Union – ‘The editorial page challenge?’. Therein he announces a reader participation audit scheduled for January 2016.  The NCRWF audit is ongoing, and I’ll report updated results as they become available.  RR’s position repeated is that as a private enterprise The Union can choose its own political tilt, and grouse as we may from our own perches there is no need to demand that the newspaper succumb to someone's standard of ‘balance’ as constantly called for by our locally loud progressives.  

Ruminations - 8dec15 (updated 9dec15)

George Rebane

AG Loretta Lynch said yesterday that there was not enough evidence to connect San Berdoo’s terrorists with any specific religion.  For that I called her a double dummy.  Upon reflection, that overly generous attribution was in error, and I withdraw it.  English currently does not have an appropriate term that accurately describes her level of ignorance and/or cynicism.  Therefore I must await an expanded lexicon.

Many of us notice that the Left immediately starts hyperventilating about gun control in the aftermath of the latest Muslim massacre.  This serves two purposes – 1) pursuit of an ever more compliant America to prepare the country for global governance, and 2) the Left’s mindset allows no viable opposition to the spread of radical Islam and its global caliphate.  William McGurn (‘The Liberal Theology of Gun Control’) also argues this point.  Our electorate's ignorance of this organic deficit constitutes a clear and present danger to America remaining a sovereign nation-state.  (Isn’t it interesting that both the Left and Islam seek to rule all of humanity under a single world order?)

One person, two-thirds vote.  This is the important case that SCOTUS is now chewing on as it reconsiders the population bases for the states’ drawing of district lines.  If all mirror foggers are counted, then districts with heavy illegal alien and other non-voting populations will increase the clout of those in the district who can vote.  This is a violation of the 14th Amendment, and I hope SCOTUS hearing Evenwell v Abbott has sufficient external plumbing to recognize such violation.  (more here)

Trump’s proposed Muslim ingress ban has gotten every other politician’s undies in a bunch.  The Donald says we should stop all Muslims entering the US until our government comes up with a viable policy (any policy?) that recognizes and deals with sources of radicalized Islamic terror.  Given the role of taqiya (about which no one wants to talk), the reticence of our moderate Muslims to expose their own radicals, and the lengthening record of massacres by Muslims, Trump has voiced that which many (most?) Americans support given this administration’s abrogating its responsibility to secure the country.  In response to such outlandish pronouncements, Trump’s poll numbers have finally surged well north of the 25% region where he seems to have been stuck for a long time.

[Update]  Power went out on Cement Hill this afternoon and is not expected back until late this evening, unless PG&E postpones it again.  During these times I am reminded that PG&E and all other utilities don’t really work for the consumers of their product.  They are monopolies that work for their state public utilities commissions.  The PUCs are faceless bureaucrats with totally different agendas to fulfill – it is they who regulate and set the rate cards for the utilities.  When a neighborhood like ours loses power (today for a reason that clearly was not an ‘act of God’), they will take their own sweet time to get it repaired so as minimize some cost function that does not involve my inconvenience.  And the progressives want the government to control ever more of the production and distribution of our goods and services.

[9dec15 update]  A commenter under "... A Cancer on our Nation" contributed this little piece of American law that seems to render moot remarks offered by Sen Cruz on Muslim entrants, and remove considerable sting from Mr Trump's blanket dictum.  Wonder why no one has brought this up in the national debate.

8 U.S. Code § 1182 - Inadmissible aliens
....
(f) Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

Posted by drivebyposter, 9dec15 634am

And a reader and correspondent sends the report ('America's Muslims object to Obama's push for more self-surveillance') by Reuters.  The responses coming in (as in this example) from the country's mosques are not very hopeful, instead they do support the polling results (reported here) of the attitudes of America's Muslims toward jihad, shariah law, the caliphate, and support of ISIS.  RR's proposition that there are a lot fewer 'moderate Muslims'  among us than claimed by the Left and the lamestream stands.

Meanwhile another correspondent sends a report by the Associated Press on the impacts of climate change -

The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consulate, at Bergen, Norway.

Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone.

Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes.

Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm.

Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared.

Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic,

while vast shoals of herring and smelts which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.

Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable.

This report was published in the 2nov1922 issue of The Washington Post 93 years ago.

Sandbox - 8dec15

[Last night Fox News reported the results of the latest polls on Obama's performance in the areas of foreign policy, national security, domestic policy.  The results in all three areas are that about two out of three Americans believe the president is screwing up in these areas.  But his 'come what may' supporters don't see any of these gross failures.  But there were some defections from the lamestream over Obama's tone deaf speech to the nation Sunday night.  And his new attorney general is coming across as a real double dummy when yesterday she declared that it's premature to judge and connect any specific religion to the San Berdoo attack since every religion has its radical elements.  You can't make this stuff up; these are the idiots our liberal neighbors voted for and sent to Washington - twice!  gjr]

"... A Cancer on Our Nation"

George Rebane

So writes conservative commentator Erick Erickson (here) in a piece in which he dissects Obama’s 6dec15 lecture from the Oval Office (more here)  We watched it with friends last night, hoping against hope from our President for an epiphany of situational awareness and national leadership – nothing.

As he droned on, his words (here) ranged the gamut from stultifying to outrageous.  Unbelievable!

 

State of NorCal promoter?

George Rebane

Former county supervisor and current CEO of the Sierra Fund, Ms Izzy Martin, will most certainly become a significant factor promoting the formation of the new state of North California (see also State of Jefferson).  The community organizer and environmental activist is an archetype leftwinger who is doing everything possible to grow Leviathan and achieve the objectives of Agenda21 (q.v.).  One of her latest forays is to pass SB637 which would essentially eliminate small dredge miners on California’s rivers (for a start).  The bill calls for such miners to obtain a $900 dredging permit for each site on which they set up their equipment and mine for a while before moving to another site.  (more here and here)

The new law would do nothing to preserve the environment, but merely uses 'green arguments' for light thinkers to create the aura of doing something for the public good when, in fact, there is no such achievement present or even possible in the legislation.  All it will do is remove another layer of freedoms.  Then again, that is their real objective.

But the significant impact of such progressive proscriptions is that they highlight the need to separate out the less densely part of northern California into a new state whose population understands and can promote its local interests.  Ms Martin emphasized that need by the way she got SB637 launched.  She couldn’t find any northern legislator to sponsor such a bill, so she simply went south to the LA area and found a Santa Monica based state senator, who has no interest in norCal save assuring that the south gets our water, to sponsor the bill which the Sierra Fund wordsmithed.  The near-term result of all this is appropriately communicated by our own RL Crabb in the above cartoon filched from the pages of the 5dec15 Union.

The longer term impact, of course, is putting more wind into the sails of the NorCal movement (nee SoJ).  Present day California is an oversized ideologically dichotomized political unit that invites a minority socialist from a low density conservative region to carpet bag their agenda to a distant, high density liberal metropolis.  This type of end-running local interests is in my mind both underhanded and reprehensible.  With the overwhelming collectivist majority in Sacramento, such legislative maneuvers underscore that the majority conservatives of the north have no effective representation in their state’s legislature.  Let the NorCal movement take new encouragement from the backhanded promotions by people like Izzy Martin.

Sandbox - 3dec15

[Apologies for the delay of fresh sand.  I had to be reminded again :(  gjr]

Taqiya on Steroids? (updated 4dec15)

George Rebane

The San Bernardino massacre investigation continues.  Given the evidence to date, the authorities still cannot decide whether it was just ‘workplace violence’ or the latest attack by Islamic terrorists.  What is reported by the news services – Associated Press, WSJ, … - is pretty compelling (more here).  We do know that –

1. The two shooters were Muslims – Syed Farook, a native born American citizen, and Tashfeen Malik, the immigrant wife of Farook and the mother of their 6-month old child.
2. Farook had travelled to Saudi Arabia last year from where he returned with Malik.
3. Upon his return he grew a beard as do many newly devout Muslim men.
4. He worked for San Berdoo county as a restaurant inspector, was a model citizen, and had no criminal record.
5. Before their 2dec15 attack at a county facility where a holiday party was in progress, the couple had made extensive preparations for acts of terror at their home which included pipe bombs, IEDs, radio controlled vehicles besides obtaining the full combat gear which they wore during their killing spree.  Earlier that day they gave their baby into the care of relatives.
6. Authorities on the scene stated that Farook and Malik were definitely executing a “planned mission”.  Given the preparations, there was no evidence of spontaneity in their attack.

There will undoubtedly be more and the story is still developing.  But what I want to cover here is that again we have an atrocious act of terror carried out by formerly normal people who worked, were raising a family, blended in admirably, and gave no evidence of anything aberrant before they acted.  In hindsight, the only attribute that connected them to such previous attacks is that the couple were practicing Muslims.

A Bayesian would take a look at the evidence and rationally conclude that yes, given the recent history of radical Islam and jihad, and the tenets of their faith, this couple would have a higher probability of being terrorists in waiting as they finally demonstrated to the world.  (For those who disagree, the Bayesian would be compelled to change his mind given evidence that religious belief was not a supportive/determinant factor.)

From the worldview which apparently guided Farook and Malik and so many Muslims today, is that these terrorists were courageous, self-sacrificing soldiers acting for and with the blessings of Allah.  They were prepared to die and die they did in the service of their faith.  In that worldview they were not cowards or miscreants but model mujahedeen serving as exemplars to their fellow believers in the spread of Islam. 

And to execute their plan they practiced taqiya to perfection.  Students of Islam and readers of these pages know that taqiyya or taqiya (q.v.) is the scripturally sanctioned practice of dissimulation and other forms of perfidy including the denial of one’s faith that is allowed Muslims if such practice may serve to promote the greater goals of Islam.  All such surprise attacks by Muslims living among us here and overseas are launched subsequent to successful preludes of taqiya.  Where in other belief systems such practice of ambush and shattering of the social contract would be considered abhorrent, in the world of radical Islam it is a much admired and condoned facet of selfless martyrdom.

The real problem that taqiya presents to America and the west is in how should we deport ourselves with our Muslim neighbors.  To continue normal social life in our land we must presume that the large fraction of Muslims among us would never practice taqiya and lay in wait for an opportunity to kill us and ours (polls to the contrary notwithstanding).  Yet every time one of their co-religionists perpetrates such an abhorrent act, it gives all non-Muslims pause as they review their relations with their Muslim friends and neighbors.  And that exactly is the aim of the jihadists.  They want to disrupt our social order, and they want to cast suspicion on their brethren living with us so as to compel them to opt for ‘their own kind’ as they drive the wedge they have created ever deeper between Islam and the world of the Kafir (q.v.).

I don’t see any ready solution to this growing schism between our civilizations save prompt, unfailing, strenuous, loud, and large scale demonstrations by moderate Muslims during which they denounce such acts of terror.  They cannot remain silent in the face of such killings, and they cannot shelter those of their own who preach violence against the west.  In sum, they cannot ask us to trust them more than they trust us, for that we have already done.  Contrary to the pabulum spewed by progressives, taqiya is an enduring problem which yields to no simple solution.

'Tis the Season for Some Folly

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 2 December 2015.]

Jo Ann and I hope that everyone had a meaningful and enjoyable Thanksgiving, and have properly girded themselves for the busiest, most stressful month of the year.  Rather than delve into another globe shaking issue or national catastrophe in the making, I’ll instead try to rattle some cages on a more general collection of our new shibboleths and ingrained verities.   Many of you know that I host a controversial blog that is inevitably on the wrong side of every politically correct thought held dear by 21st century progressives.  This evening I want to cover some details of these thoughts.  And in line with today’s progressive protocols, perhaps this is the place to issue a trigger warning to some of our more sensitive listeners.

The other day on my blog it was noted that five illegal aliens are suing Oregon for not granting them driver’s licenses.  I then had the temerity to post the following, somewhat edited, question – “Does anyone know where these illegal aliens and their coddling collectivists get the harebrained idea that they are owed anything in this country save a free trip back to the border?  How did all this get started?”

The point of the question was summarily ignored, and I was taken to task by two prominent liberals of our community about my presumably callous attitude toward these people, seeing as how I too was born in a foreign land and, at the invitation of the US Congress, immigrated here after WW2.  The left-leaning debaters made no difference between legal immigration and a felonious entry into our land.  The implicit conclusion was that as long as you’re both here, you both should have equal rights.  However, the last time I looked, immigration to America was still subject to a two-party agreement between our government and the applicant for immigration.

I will not bore you with the heated discussion which followed, with many readers weighing in on the issue.  One of the threads that developed, at least in my mind, was the matter of culture.  What may be called America’s mainstream culture has always been in flux since Europeans first set foot on these shores.  But the progress of cultural change was very measured, and in the public square centered on an amalgam of European Christian values and traditions.  This accepted cultural target for assimilation started to unravel in the 1950s, slowly at first as we became Judeo-Christian, but then picking up steam as the Great Society programs kicked into gear, after which an uncounted number of new and old cultures and their traditions were elevated and celebrated, while symbols and observances of the old were diminished or completely removed.

Today we are in a cultural turmoil where the once dominant American culture is now daily maligned along with those who dare recall it in discussions of who then are we and where are we going.  Have we abandoned the adoption of a new American culture which can again be accepted by all as our common ground?  Don’t get me wrong, we cannot go back, nor am I promoting a return to yesteryear.  But will our future hold a culture that again can be called American, and about whose traditions and tenets our young will be educated?  Or will we continue as a multi-cultural polyglot with no shared center?

Over the life of our Republic immigrants have come to enjoy our liberties and opportunities for a better life, and in the process they have contributed lavishly to what made America the envy of the world.  These immigrants came and stashed their native cultures behind their private lives as they visibly celebrated American culture and assimilated with astonishing speed.  But today there is little reason to abandon exhibiting the culture into which you were born.  Why?  Because there is nothing of apparent value, form, and function which you can adopt in its stead.  So all over the world immigrants and migrants are facing the same cultural challenge, and given a choice, they would overwhelmingly opt to return to or retain their native culture.  This is especially true in the Mideast where, instead of emigrating, almost all refugees in the camps simply want to return to the life and culture they had.  The important question then becomes, what culture will they cling to as they arrive in a strange country that neither claims nor offers a dominant culture of its own?

And from our own perch here in the western hemisphere, what kind of country are we evolving toward as we indiscriminately pile every new culture upon our already large stack of recently arrived and recognized cultures?  It’s worth a thought when we consider the function that culture serves in organizing a cohesive and stable society.

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the addended transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

[Addendum]  Coincidentally the 2dec15 WSJ contained a piece by News Corp executive chairman Rupert Murdoch from a recent speech he gave at the Hudson Institute.  The essay ‘America the Indispensible’ summarizes much of my conservetarian sentiment that is recorded in these pages, and it is germane to my radio commentary since Murdoch is also an immigrant and naturalized American citizen.  The essay is about world order and America’s role in maintaining it since WW2.  In it the author expresses a sentiment I experienced as a sixteen-year-old ‘Indiana teenager’ when I finally received my citizenship papers after being country for seven years – “Like so many naturalized citizens, I felt that I was an American before I formally became one.”

 

 

Sandbox - 1dec15

[Well, 'tis the global warming season among other less intensely celebrated religious holidays.  We will observe it with an intense fervor not seen in many a year.  And AGW, I might add, has ascended to become mankind's first global religion.  This week's Economist features its cover story titled 'Clear thinking on climate change' in which the lead commentary accepts the kool-aid with the short statement "that climate change is happening, that it is very largely man-made and that it is exceedingly dangerous, are all now hard to deny".  Then it goes on to discuss the political situation in Paris, and that any real agreement will be hard to achieve.  And then, I kid you not, in its 14-page spread to induce the promised "clear thinking", it goes through a major dissertation on the models and science, admitting that essentially nothing is well known about the dynamics of earth's climate and less about making the models used to predict near term catastrophe intended to launch thousands of laws and regulations to tame earth's temperature.  Now there we have a good and clear example of liberal thought.  gjr]